New Moon By the Numbers, a Year End Update

According to Box Office Mojo, New Moon moved into the number 4 position of best selling movies of 2009 overtaking this summer’s The Hangover. One thing to note is that the movies that are ahead of New Moon all opened in the spring/summer and recently closed their tallies after a 4-6 month run.

What’s going to be interesting is to see if New Moon will crack the $300,000,000 before it closes out in around March. It’s also going to be interesting to see where Avatar ends up in this mix since it’s tickets are more for the 3-D experience. As usual, in the what does this mean to the average movie goer, Larry explains it all.

E! has an interesting look at “The Year’s Biggest Bombs” only it’s not what you might think. It’s a look at what was spent to make a movie vs. what that movie made back in ticket sales. Some interesting stats according to E!:

“1. New Moon beat Harry Potter. In bang for buck. New Moon made more than 12 times its $50 million budget ($635 million worldwide); Half-Blood Prince “only” made about four times its $250 million price tag.

2. Harry Potter beat everything. The sixth boy-wizard adventure was the year’s overall No. 1 film, with $924 million in the worldwide bank, even if Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was the No. 1 film domestically—and the only one to top $400 milllion stateside.”

In other driving factors, there is the rumor mill. You never know what brings people back to theaters. On the IMDB one person claims to have seen an Eclipse preview right after her showing of New Moon. Mind you she is the ONLY person who seems to have seen this and according to her she wasn’t able to snap any photo with her camera, but can remember every second of this trailer that she saw once with blow-by-blow, detailed accuracy. What’s amazing is how many people on the IMDB reported to racing out to see this, it then went to Twitter, and yep that’s the making of a viral rumor. Nonetheless, viral rumors, no matter how illogical and in this case not true, drive the boxoffice.

Now none of this accounts for piracy, meaning how many people saw the movie without paying. According to the New York Times, Twilight is number 5 on the list of most pirated movies in 2009. Star Trek holds the number 1 position. No clue where New Moon will fall in the 2010 list.

No matter where New Moon ends up, regardless it’s quite an accomplishment for a film that is predominantly female box office driven.

Comments

New Moon has done so well with a female fan base. I’M SO PROUD OF IT ! I don’t know any chick flick that’s ever gotten this much. And what’s even sadder is that most chick movies get made really cheap because they think we don’t watch movies BUT TWILIGHT HAS SHOWN THEM BUT honestly Twilight is special and I don’t think can be done again.

It will be very interesting to see how Eclipse does since it will have the summer opening. Much more time to rack up the numbers.

Unfortunately, New Moon has already closed in my area. It played a month and four days. That’s not exactly enough time in my opinion. Although I saw it five times, I was hoping to see it at least twice more.

I am so glad you said that. I was going to see it one more time tonite 12/27 and it is no longer showing here either, I was so sad, and it is still number # 5 in box office sales and they are still playing Old Dogs and 2012 which are number 8 & 9 in box office sales. I loved New Moon, saw it four times, but I was disappointed in the ending. I felt that the last three most important chapters were squeezed into the last 10 minutes of the movie as an after thought.

Why do you think New Moon was pulled so early? Especially since it is # 5 in box office and what can be done to get it back in the theatres? answers welcomed?

Another thought…It is the female reading public who are making a success of the Twilight Saga movies.

Don’t try to broaden the audiences by adding background stories and action scenes that were not in the book and shortening or not including the MOST IMPORTANT chapters to fit into a time frame.

I am not against males seeing the movies I just don’t want the movie adjusted to appeal to that demographic to bring in the numbers.

The female reading audience put New Moon in the record books without the help of the male population, and it continues to be in the top 5. Avatar didn’t even bring in the numbers which seems to have big male audience.

While I love me some Twilight, I don’t mind the additional backstories or action scenes in the movies at all. I think it’s great to see more of our beloved characters in action. For me, it enhances the movie-going experience.

While I degress why some crap movies like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen or ugh… G.I. Joe do well at all, 90% of the time it comes down to story. While big epic action flicks do tend to draw a lot of males, there are a darn lot of females watching them too. I remember going to see Lord of the Rings: Return of the King opening night with my sister, Fe, and there were tons of women of various ages there.
Actiony epics tend to bring large numbers of people period. In reality even those may not be solely male driven, as New Moon isn’t solely female driven. Yes you find greater amounts of women seeing New Moon, but there were plenty of men there when I went to see it twice.
A good movie with action in it is going to draw crowds regardless.
Avatar is a GOOD movie. Yeah it sort of rips off Dances with Wolves, but then again, if you’re gonna rip off a movie, Dances is a very good one to copy.

While I was a little miffed about Ebert’s review of NM, I didn’t let it stop me from seeing it 5 times.
None of the critics hold sway with me. I see what I want to see when I want to see it. Heck, I went to see Revenge of the Fallen and it absolutely sucked eggs! Worse. Movie. Ever.

I didn’t get to see New Moon a second time. It closed just too early and I didn’t have any free time with all the school work. I feel so bad and the DVD won’t be out atleast until March, I think. I can’t wait for that long. It’s so unfair.

I’m really glad New Moon has made it to the fourth position, but I wish I could help it make more money.

my brother (married and decidedly very manly) and sister (who’s more of a pointless action movie person) has seen this movie, and now we talk Twilight shop… it’s hilarious and i tell them about the books and while they are tentative to read the novels, they recommend the movie to friends.

I’ve watched New Moon FIVE times and it just gets better and better with every viewing!

Alexandre Desplat’s haunting and evocative score plays a huge part; and I pick up little nuances, listen to the script more carefully and appreciate the moments more deeply each and every time.
And actually, i prefer to watch it ALONE, and juz literally ‘drown’ in the whole experience, ‘cos I get very emotional! 🙂

So…”BOO!” to all those critics and haters who simply don’t ‘get’ the essence of Twilight/New Moon and appreciate a beautiful movie.

I’d have watched it everyday if time and circumstances permitted but of course, we Twilighters do have a LIFE apart from all the Twi-love. 😉

Here, here twice Janelene. I also have the CDs and absolutely love them. My 2 daughters ages 15 and 10 and I have seen the movie 3 times (which my husband thinks is absolutely a waste of money) but who cares what he says..LOL…We will probably see it again unless it stops playing in our town. We love it even more each time we see it, and can’t wait for the DVD. I absolutely lost it when Edward left Bella and then again when she tells Jacob “Please don’t make me chose, cause it’ll be him” I was very sad about this too, which didn’t make sense because I am 100% team Edward. I think I was sad for Jacob (Taylor Lautner is great as Jacob). I may have to go watch it alone before it stops playing here..that actually sounds wonderful! We love Twilight too and watch the DVD many times at home. We hope Eclipse will be as good as New Moon but Chris Weitz is wonderful, not too sure about David Slade (that 30 days of night movie he did was strange.)

I’veseen avatar,it’sgreat. But I love Twilight more than the blue-colored navi people.

GUYS WE needto toneit down with this Twilight vs Potter comparison.I’m both a Twilight/harrypotter fan and 100% of those pureHarry Potterfans are really mad at how Twilight is the no. 1 book of the decade, instead of the other potter books according to USA Today (just check out twilightsource.com or mugglenet.com)

Jaz, Twilight may be number one, but that doesn’t really mean it’s sold more. It means it was number one on the list for a longer period of time. Twilight sold twenty-two million in ONE YEAR; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold fifteen million copies in the FIRST DAY worldwide. Harry Potter has amassed over 400,000,000 sales; Twilight? Hasn’t even reached 100,000,000. J.K. Rowling WOULD top this list, if it weren’t for the fact that they created a separate children’s bestseller list and HP was moved to it. Also, more people bought Harry Potter in a single day than they did with Twilight. That gives time for Twilight to be bought over a longer time period. This means that it stays at number one longer, even if it doesn’t sale as much (hence that is why Harry Potter has sold hundreds of more millions). If it weren’t for J.K. Rowling, Stephenie wouldn’t be famous at all. JKR has inspired millions of people.

that’s what I’m saying. i really don’t like how critics are bashing the Twilight series and comparing it to Harry Potter. These books are both fantastic works of imagination. Like Just because they speak mostly to teenagers and young adults, doesn’t mean we have to compare both. I don’t remember this kind of stuff happening between Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter!
I love both of the HP and Twilight series, and it just makes me sad how one side points out that theirs is better than the other. ( though obviously, Harry Potter is more massive)

hp-for-the-win,
yes, okay, harry potter has sold more, it has also been around for longer! And you are comparing the first twilight book to the last harry potter book, which isnt fair. I am a huge fan of harry potter and im not saying that one is better than the other (even though i prefer twilight (the books, not the movioes)) but i think that, right now, Twilight is more of a big deal and there are more devotees to it now opposed to hp.
Either way there is no need for competition, whats the point? its not like theres a prize or something for tyhe ‘winner’ “hp-for-the-win” the win for what? u already stated that hp has sold more books.. what are you trying to win? exactly so just leave the twilighters to their wants, if we want to try and make it the best than we can do that, in the same way you can do it for hp.. so enough with the needless competition!! Love em both!

Dude, I see your point & respect your opinion, but, I can’t really understand is: Why all this competition?? Both series are very good… I have them. I am a fan of BOTH & support it. So, why are you losing your time doing this? Really (no offense, seriously), this is a kind of silly, don’t you think?

New Moon is still playing in two of the theaters in my hometown,but the showings are being pushed to night time. I hope to see it again before it leaves the theaters and I’ve seen it six times already. I’m a fan of both HP and the Twilight saga,but nowadays I’m more of a Twilight fan. Besides Half-Blood Prince came out in the summer. So it had a longer run at the box office,to become number one for the year. New Moon made numbers that surprised just about everybody and I can’t wait to see if Eclipse will top New Moon’s success next summer.

What I don’t understand is why New Moon is being pulled from theaters already. And here, it’s only showing at night. WTF? I saw Twilight last year well into January and it was still showing many times during the day. Twilight Lexicon-can you offer any ideas as to why this is?

Some of the smaller theaters in my area are still showing New Moon. The best way I discovered to check is by typing “Movie Theaters Showing New Moon” into google and then click on the Maps tab and it should show only theaters that are still showing New Moon. I did this for Twilight too last year. Good luck!